Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning for any reason. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release), and I’m not gonna dig through the hundreds of trash indie games that come out on Steam every day to find the one or 2 okay ones that pop up occasionally. So if there’s no/few indie games here, it’s pretty normal.

Also I’m skipping the boatload of indie game ports and third-party ports on Switch that will probably come out. I guess the more noteworthy ones this month would be… Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus and Payday 2? Pac-Man CE2 sucks though.Read more…

So 2017 was a pretty interesting year. On the non-gaming side for me it was fairly quiet though the year started (literally a few days into the year) with my father being diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently my father beating the shit out of said cancer and being cancer-free within a few months. Also I built a gaming PC on my own for the first time (before that I’d pay NCIX extra to build for me, never again). It’s super easy, everyone can and should do it… maybe I should do a quick post about that.

As far as gaming goes though… 2014, 2015, 2016 have all been pretty lame years for gaming. Game of the Year posts from me were difficult to write for the last few years because… Well, when there’s a year where there aren’t even 5 games good enough for the GotY award, you know it was a bad year. That said, 2017 said “fuck that here’s a ton of games” and I could’ve easily made a decent GotY post halfway through the year, with completely different games than what are on the list now, and it would still be a solid list. I did not have time to stop playing games this year, because there was always new stuff coming out. 2017 was a HUGE year for games, it was pure insanity.

So yeah… let’s go as per usual. A quick rant, then 5 almost-winners followed by the top GotY winner and finally a boatload of honorable mentions. Haven’t quite played enough trash this year for a “Trash of the Year” segment… So I won’t do that this time.

Rules: only games I played, and only games that came out this year (so no remasters or late ports, remakes are a grey area but I avoid them… example: the Crash trilogy wouldn’t be valid, but the Samus Returns remake would be). I may still put some as honorable mentions but they’re not valid for GotY candidacy.

Note: There’s several noteworthy 2017 games I haven’t played like Prey, Pyre, Evil Within 2, South Park, Hellblade, Battle Chasers: Nightwar, Divinity: Original Sin II, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Hand of Fate 2, For Honor, Dragon Quest Heroes II and a handful of others, so if you think they’re GotY and I don’t name them, know that I hold no ill will for these games.

Other note: I avoided games I knew would be shit like Shadows of War, Destiny 2, whatever Assassin’s Creed came out, Battlefront 2, Mass Effect Andromeda and several others… and know that I do hold ill will for these.

Man, this sure was a game. 77 hours to get to the end, and that was on the low end of the spectrum from what I’m reading. I’ve wanted to give up many times and make this post a “Games I won’t review” post. But I pushed through, and last weekend I think I got like 23 hours in, for my final push to finish it. I think if I didn’t do that I never would’ve finished it.

Persona 5 is a game I’m a bit conflicted about, and also a game that has a lot to talk about. So I’ll try out my new reviewing “style” once again as I did with Zelda and Nier. I’ll start with my overall thoughts, then go more in-depth about certain things after. I like doing reviews this way, it’s different from the “presentation, gameplay, overall” formula and more fun to write (and hopefully read).

I blinked, is April over already? That was fast, after March felt so long to me. Okay so time for May I guess. April had a few big releases and I did manage to get a few reviews out, and I still need to review some stuff (Persona 5 is a beast, time-wise, but I will get as close to the ending as I can before writing anything about it… I might be getting close, who knows). Thankfully, May has very little of note, so I can rest a bit easy.

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no/few indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no immediate interest in.

Shovel Knight is one of the few really strong examples of a successful video game Kickstarter. It was delayed nearly a year compared to the estimate date on the kickstarter page, but the wait was well worth it. Shovel Knight was a fantastic game in basically every aspect.

I don’t think I reviewed the first DLC, Plague of Shadows. But it was quite fun and felt like a completely different game than Shovel Knight despite taking place in largely similar levels and environments and using pretty much all the same components.

Specter of Torment is the latest DLC, and I thought I’d give my quick impressions about it.

March was quite the month for me. My dad got cancer surgery (he’s doing good), work being weird, Switch, a bunch of posts, too much Power Rangers, Switch, Nier, probably other games… It feels like this month lasted a year. But we’re right at the end and it’s time to talk about next month!

The count in April: 17 multiplats, a Switch release, 2 PS4 releases and a PC release. There’s a good number of interesting releases this month. I’m grabbing quite a few things.

So let’s talk about it!

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no immediate interest in.

I don’t know that this is a kind of game that really merits a full review. There’s a lot of Dynasty Warriors games that use other licenses nowadays, so one review generally works for multiple games.

Berserk feels like a weird choice for the genre, at least as far as the story goes. That said, the idea of cleaving through armies with Guts’ giant sword is a great one. So I picked it up, basically as mild distraction until other stuff came out.

So this is a quick impressions post. Not doing a full review because I’m not fully done with it yet, and because there’s not really much to say about this game that a full review would cover.

With the utter fail that was the Mighty No 9 kickstarter project as a whole (and other utter failures like Star Citizen and the Ouya), trust for Kickstarter games have gone way down. but it’s not like every Kickstarter project HAS to be bad, or fail to deliver. Despite what it seems like, there’s occasionally a KS project that does turn into am actual game, and within that group there’s some that are actually good.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero was set to be one of these rare projects that would “for sure” end up being successful. And a couple days ago backers such as I got access to the game ahead of its release date (though that was following lots of delays, as is standard with KS projects).

I’m not SUPER familiar with Shantae (though I do have Risky’s Revenge and Pirate’s Curse on Steam, I haven’t actually played them), but I have seen a lot of them in reviews and such. I haven’t played the GBC game because it’s freakishly rare and expensive (though it IS on the 3DS Virtual Console so I might grab that eventually).

So here’s my early review of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. Read on and see if this is one of those rare Kickstarter successes alongside the likes of Shovel Knight and a small handful of others!

Wow, lots of posts since the last release post, that’s quite nice. I want to try putting more stuff on here because… it’s fun, I like writing even if no one reads it. I do have some reviews coming still, and I’m still figuring out what kind of stuff I can write here.

So November… It gets a nice big “meh” from me as far as what I care about, and not a lot of games in general. 2 new pieces of hardware, 8 multiplats, 3 3DS games, 1 PS4 game and 2 PC releases. This is pretty pathetic for what should be the biggest month of the year every year. Do game companies just not care about the holiday season anymore?

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays. Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known. So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I’m just highlighting the most noteworthy stuff.

September has been crazy, with DQ7 taking all my time and SMTIV Apocalypse staring at me and a couple other games I played. So I do have reviews on the way. I just need to have time to write stuff.

So October has a couple things: 1 Wii U piece of shit, 3 Vita releases, 1 PS4 piece of hardware (and some games I’m not listing), 17 multiplatform releases and 3 PC releases.

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays. Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known. So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal.